NASCAR – News about cool carshttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online
All the most interesting news about supercar!Mon, 19 Mar 2018 14:08:48 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3Kevin Harvick makes NASCAR history at Phoenixhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/kevin-harvick-makes-nascar-history-phoenix/
Sun, 11 Mar 2018 23:20:32 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19531Harvick was ready to take his frustrations out on the field.

The Busch brothers may have won stages one and two, but Kevin Harvick is an unstoppable force early in this NASCAR season. Going into the race, everyone knew Harvick had something to prove, which is odd considering he had just won two straight races. But, after a big penalty at Vegas took him out of the championship lead, Harvick was ready to take his frustrations out on the field.

Harvick started 10th and was laying back for most of the race, but took over with just over 20 laps to go to win his third straight race. Kyle Busch looked like the strongest car for much of the race, leading 124 laps and winning stage one, but had to settle for second place in the end. Chase Elliott finished third.

Harvick made history with the three-peat, becoming the first driver over 40 to win three in a row since 1991.

During the week, Harvick expressed his frustrations with the penalty stemming from a failed roof brace, and predicted that he would have the last laugh the next time he visited victory lane.

“I can’t wait to win another race, and jump up and down in victory lane on the back of my car,” he said. He didn’t have to wait very long.

]]>Martin Truex Jr. wins the pole in Phoenixhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/martin-truex-jr-wins-pole-phoenix/
Sat, 10 Mar 2018 16:18:15 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19520Chevy also got some good news out of the session.

Matin Truex Jr. got off to a rough start to 2018 and he isn’t exactly sure why. Asked about his early pace versus other teams, Truex said per Motorsport.com, “I don’t know if they’ve picked it up quicker than we have or the rules have benefited their body style more than it did ours. We had to change some things from how we did them last year and it appears those guys are really quick right now.”

Currently without a single stage win, which were vital to his championship run last season, Truex has been showing steady improvement after finishing a disappointing 18th at Daytona. He then finished fifth at Atlanta and fourth in Las Vegas, but this week at Phoenix, he finally performed like the defending champion is expected to.

Truex put in a lap time of 26.288 seconds at the one mile ISM raceway to win pole position for the TicketGuardian 500. He beat second place Kyle Larson by .058 seconds.

“I think it was a little bit of everything,” Truex said via NASCAR.com. “I wouldn’t say I held back that much the first two runs. But we really worked on our car in practice to try to be best in that third run and to understand what we needed to do for balance-wise throughout those three runs. Honestly, sometimes you just hit it right, and today all the stars lined up, and here we are.”

Truex currently sits fourth in the points standings, but has no playoff points. Starting from the front puts Truex in a great position to change that by snagging his first stage win of the season.

Chevy also got good news out of the qualifying session, claiming three of the top four spots with Larson, Chase Elliott and Daytona 500 winner Alex Bowman locking down second through fourth place. Joey Logano’s Ford qualified in fifth.

]]>One team is already on their backup car heading into Phoenixhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/one-team-already-backup-car-heading-phoenix/
Fri, 09 Mar 2018 21:51:31 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19505That's a tough start to the weekend.

Ricky Stenhouse and the number 17 car are already having a tough time in Phoenix.

Stenhouse experienced a lockup going into turn three and hit the wall during practice. The hit was hard enough to force the team to use their backup car. Last year, this would be a small setback, but this season, new rules make it a bigger deal.

The previous rules allowed for a driver to keep his or her place as long as the car used for qualifying is the same as the one used in the race. Now a car that is crashed or experiences an engine failure at any point during the race weekend will send the driver to the back of the pack for the race regardless of qualifying.

Now that Stenhouse will start from the back of the pack, it will be interesting to see his approach to qualifying. It won’t determine his starting spot, but it will be vital practice in a backup car. Plus, it’s not easy to tell a racer to ‘take it easy’ once he is behind the wheel on a track.

]]>Harvick has strong questions for NASCAR’s methods after his big penaltyhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/harvick-strong-questions-nascars-methods-big-penalty/
Fri, 09 Mar 2018 21:37:55 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19502He compared the situation to a controversy in golf.

The topic of the week heading leading up to Phoenix in NASCAR was Kevin Harvick’s penalty. Harvick put in an amazing performance last week in Las Vegas, sweeping the race by winning stage one, stage two and then the race overall. But, after the race, controversy over a deformation of Harvick’s roof put the dominating performance in doubt.

Fans and other drivers noticed something weird going on with Harvick’s roof and back window during the race, and you can see in this image that the rear roof and window were collapsed slightly:

Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Harvick’s crew chief, Rodney Childers explained that a brace had failed and that the dip probably didn’t give the car an advantage. Obviously, NASCAR is not in the business of letting things slide just because the offending crew chief doesn’t think it made a difference, so they penalized Harvick’s team.

Harvick was docked 20 championship points, Childers was fined $50,000 and car chief Robert Smith was suspended for the next two races, according to YahooSports. In addition, Harvick doesn’t get to use the seven playoff points he earned at Vegas.

When asked about the penalty, Harvick did not hold back. He expressed confusion over the late breaking nature of the penalty, and even questioned the NASCAR officials’ process. According to NBC Sports, he said:

“If we want to officiate it with fan pictures – if you want to officiate it with pictures during the race and call people to pit road and do those types of things, from a NASCAR standpoint I am fine with that. As long as it is consistent. As you can see, from a lot of the pictures roaming around on the internet this week, it is not consistent.”

He then compared the situation to a similar one in Golf, where Lexi Thompson was given a four stroke penalty the day after an infraction was caught on TV by a viewer who emailed the LPGA.

“It just feels like it is a micromanaged situation from above what these guys do in the garage, to appease people sitting on social media and trying to officiate a sporting event instead of letting these guys in the garage do what they do and do a great job with it week in and week out. That is the frustrating part,” Harvick continued.

He’s not letting his frustrations get him down though, as he already has a celebration planned for his next win:

“I can’t wait to win another race, and jump up and down in victory lane on the back of my car.”

Kevin Harvick is dominating NASCAR early this season by following the example set by last year’s champ, Martin Truex Jr. Harvick already has two wins and three stage wins, which earned him the top spot in the NASCAR standings… for a couple days.

Harvick dominated at Atlanta for the fifth straight year, but this time came away with the victory, and then followed it up by putting in an amazing performance in Las Vegas. Harvick swept the race, winning stage one, stage two and then the race overall. But, after the race, controversy over a deformation of Harvick’s roof put the dominating performance in doubt.

Fans and other drivers noticed something weird going on with Harvick’s roof and back window during the race, and you can see in this image that the rear roof and window were collapsed slightly:

Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Harvick’s crew chief, Rodney Childers explained that a brace had failed and that the dip probably didn’t give the car an advantage. Obviously, NASCAR is not in the business of letting things slide just because the offending crew chief doesn’t think it made a difference, so they penalized Harvick’s team.

Harvick was docked 20 championship points, Childers was fined $50,000 and car chief Robert Smith was suspended for the next two races, according to YahooSports. In addition, Harvick doesn’t get to use the seven playoff points he earned at Vegas. There is good news for Harvick, since he was already in the playoffs thanks to his win in Atlanta, but this whole penalty business is even better news for a driver who hasn’t won a single stage or race this season: Joey Logano.

Thanks to the points penalty to Harvick, Logano takes over in first place in the championship points, while Harvick slips to third. Ryan Blaney now sits in second place, only one point behind Logano. Luckily for Harvick, he does still have the most playoff points of any driver with 6, one more than Austin Dillon, even after the penalty.

Plus, if Harvick continues driving like he has, losing the Vegas sweep won’t even matter.

When former F1 development driver Carmen Jorda said women in racing should try Formula E instead of Formula One, she had some controversial reasoning.

“It’s a less physical car than in Formula One because of the downforce and because of the power steering as well. So yes, for sure. The challenge that we women have in Formula Two and Formula One is a physical issue and I think in Formula E, we won’t have it, Jorda said via ESPN. “[…] in Formula One and Formula Two there is a barrier that is a physical issue. I think there is a big issue for women and that’s why there aren’t any in those championships.”

Many people in racing have taken issue with Jorda’s appointment to the FIA’s Women in Motorsport Commission for exactly these kinds of comments, and Jorda should have known one of the most high profile women in the sport would take issue with the assertion that woman cannot handle the physical demands of high level racing.

“I think that the natural stature of a man versus a woman is probably what’s deceiving because men are naturally – stature wise, strength, muscle mass – they are stronger. When you take the peak strength of a man or a woman in the world, they’re going to be different.

“But in racing, we’re not dealing with peak strength. We’re dealing with endurance. We’re dealing with strength but mostly endurance of that, so that’s not necessary. The level of strength that you need is achievable across the board, so obviously that’s just not true. And much of (success), too, comes from being relaxed behind the wheel and getting the car to handle for you, and then things also get a lot easier.”

Patrick makes a great point, and even though NASCAR is a far cry from F1, Patrick competed seven years in the more comparable IndyCar series. She knows her stuff. If Jorda won’t take Patrick’s word on it, maybe she can be swayed by former Formula One champion Jenson Button, who supported Patrick on Twitter, saying:

Oh Carmen, you’re not helping proper female racing drivers with this comment. Ask @DanicaPatrick about being enough to drive a race car! She’d kick my butt in the gym & she’s probably as strong as any driver on the F1 Grid right now. Physical barrier is not your issue Carmen https://t.co/hbyMzrCypg

If Jorda still doubts Patrick’s bona fides, maybe she should check out Danica’s Instagram. With only one race left on her calendar (Her final race in the Indy 500), Danica has been focusing on her fitness lifestyle brand. She seems plenty strong to us.

]]>Kevin Harvick’s crew chief explained the dip in the roof of the carhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/kevin-harvicks-crew-chief-explained-dip-roof-car/
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 16:38:02 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19300Fans and competitors wondered if they were exploiting a loophole.

After his second straight victory was won in dominating fashion, there was the beginnings of controversy around Kevin Harvick’s car. On his way to sweeping all three stages in Las Vegas, fans and other drivers noticed something weird going on with Harvick’s roof and back window.

You can see in this image that, during the race, the rear roof and window were collapsed slightly:

Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Then, during the celebration after the race, the roof was suspiciously straight, although the slightest evidence of the dip can still be seen if you look closely at the line where the window meets the roof.

Robert Laberge/Getty Images

Speculation of cheating or a clever exploitation of a loophole ran rampant. Had the team found a way to legally improve the aerodynamics of the car? Even Dale Earnhardt Jr. commented on the situation on his podcast:

The possibility of a new advantage has everyone interested in the number four car, but if you believe Harvick’s own crew chief, Rodney Childers, it’s much ado about nothing.

“Basically, we had a rear window brace fail and NASCAR mandates that we run a certain T-bar in the back glass and that T-bar is actually pretty strong,’’ Childers said on “The Morning Drive” via NBC Sports. “Then also over the winter they wanted the rear package to raise the bottom of the rear glass to be really stiff and stay controlled — there were some guys that were having their rear package trays falling an inch at the end the year last year.

“The bottom of the glass got strengthened up and the T-bar is stiff and the center brace that holds that T-bar is what bent and failed and the T-bar ends up being stronger than the back of roof at that point and then pulled the back of the roof down.

“To be honest, that stuff has been a struggle over many, many years. I can remember being at Michigan with Mark Martin in 2012. You’re just going so fast at those intermediate tracks and you’ve got so much air pushing down on that stuff. I remember Mark coming off the race track and we had a 2-inch gap from the bottom of the glass to the deck lid when we came in from practice and had to modify all that stuff.’’

Of course the crew chief isn’t going to give away his secrets if he found an advantage, but Childers sounded legitimately confident that NASCAR wouldn’t have to start looking for these kinds of roof deformations as a potential advantage. He first explained that he has no idea if the dip helped or hurt the car because the wind tunnels they use to test don’t even reach those speeds. Then, he made it clear that they don’t want the dip to come back and will do everything they can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I think the biggest thing is getting it fixed and making sure that it doesn’t happen again. I think all the guys there they understand aerodynamics and they understand what goes on. We all communicate and we try to do the right things. I think also my reputation over there is pretty good.

“Like I said, it’s not something to be proud of. We’re proud of winning races and having fast cars. Whether a brace failed or not, we were going to win the other day. That’s really the whole story.’’

Unless we see more cars trying to replicate the dip, we are inclined to believe this was a structural failure, not an exploit.

]]>Kevin Harvick is dominating early in the NASCAR seasonhttp://newsaboutcoolcars.online/kevin-harvick-dominating-early-nascar-season/
Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:57:51 +0000http://newsaboutcoolcars.online/?p=19197A new driver is playing the role of Martin Truex Jr. early this year.

A new driver is playing the role of Martin Truex Jr. early this year. Truex embraced stage racing in its inaugural season in 2017 on his way to a championship. His 19 stage wins and eight race wins led all drivers and only Kyle Busch was even in the same league.

So far this year, Kevin Harvick has taken over the top spot and has been untouchable over the last two weeks. He dominated at Atlanta for the fifth straight year, but this time finally came away with the victory. He followed it up by putting in an amazing performance in Las Vegas.

Harvick swept the race, winning stage one, stage two and then the race overall to take over first place in the championship points standings.

Harvick went into the weekend thinking this weekend’s race at Las Vegas would give younger drivers a better chance at winning than Atlanta, and he said fans can expect the younger drivers to perform much better.

“There will be a lot of young guys in the mix [at Vegas] with a racetrack that’s a little calmer with things that you don’t have to have in your memory bank,” Harvick said during the week leading up to the race via AutoSport.

That prediction didn’t end up playing out, but Harvick is probably ok with being wrong.

The race had been dominated by veterans in recent years, too. Martin Truex Jr. won last year, and Brad Keselowski has won two of the last three. Harvick last won in 2015.

Kurt Busch and Chase Elliott were knocked out of the race in Las Vegas during the third stage of the race. The cars were both in contention and entering turn four when Busch lost control and took both drivers into the wall.

Both cars were too damaged to continue. In an interview after the wreck, Busch explained that he was taking it easy knowing that turn four is tricky, but still ended up losing control of the car. He was clearly annoyed with what happened and apologized to his home town fans in Vegas as well as Chase Elliott’s.

So far, it does not look like this season is going to be any kinder than last for Jimmie Johnson. He has always been the kind of driver you can’t count out, but so far, Mr. Seven time hasn’t had much reason for hope.

After two rough showings at Daytona and Atlanta, the talk during the week was all about it being too early to panic about Johnson’s lack of speed.

Then, the race at Las Vegas didn’t even start before Johnson ran into problems. Johnson’s car failed pre-race inspection three times, according to an AP report. With those three failures came an ejection of the team’s car chief Jesse Saunders and a move to the back of the pack for the start of the race.

Johnson has been steadily moving up since the start, and finished stage two in 19th place. But after a 38th-place finish at Daytona and a 27th at Atlanta, Johnson will need to make some moves in the third stage to get his season on track.